rage, rage

The title gets thrown around a lot online, and though it’s not used incorrectly, I also think it’s worth mentioning that The Death of the Author in its original intention isn’t a wholly negative thing or used only with writers you dislike or disagree with. 

For folks who use The Death of the Author in academia, it’s how you read everything from Shakespeare to Plato. It’s about removing an author and their intentions from a text in order to prioritize the reader’s relationship with the actual content, free of hierarchy. Death of the Author gives a text infinite meanings instead of a hierarchical meaning determined by the author.

For anyone upset by what’s going on in the kfam fandom - or anyone who wants to enjoy but also be critical of texts - I highly recommend utilizing this framework in your consumption of media. Because it means that your interpretation of the text is always inherently more important than the writer’s. 

gay people are already presented in the vast majority of genre fiction like the sick subversion of every love story, and if the next season (which tbh seems likely to be the final season) portrays jack wright primarily as possessed by evil and not as his own person with his own story....that’s a fucking difficult narrative line to walk without villainizing sammy and jack’s relationship entirely, and making the story about anything but love, and a happy ending can’t mitigate all of that damage

love interest-possessed stories aren’t new, (and most definitely aren’t new when it comes to gay couples, i say with bitterness as i think about the magicians). but anyone with a decent level of media literacy can realize that possession always means more than just a surface plot device. 

most famous example? angel losing his soul and turning into angelus on buffy. it’s very clearly intended as a parallel to a boyfriend turning abusive after having sex. within genre fiction, we as the audience are primed to search for that angel-to-angelus equivalent metaphor. and in the case of king falls am and jack wright, the obvious answer has deeply unsettling narrative consequences about gay love being an immoral temptation

because, not to be harsh, if i wanted a story about a gay man tempting his lover to abandon his family and join him in hell, i’d just go listen to a sermon at the culty church in my small mountain town! and it would be such a shame if a show with as much potential as king falls am, with writers who i believe are talented and well-meaning, fell down that endless rabbit hole

right now? it’s a slippery slope that almost makes me dread the show coming back. and i wish it didn’t, because i love the show very much! i’m rooting for the writers here! this is criticism, not cancellation. but it’s not a crime to say that i’ve been genuinely upset about this for at least a moment every day since ep100 came out and yet still, it’s one of the few pieces of genre fiction i believe wants to portray gay love as love. but if jack wright’s primary narrative function is to be an antagonist, i don’t know how they’re going to do that successfully.